I hate to say it, but the business model always affects the game design. The “meta” is to make a game that’s longer than 2 hours if you want to avoid this, or that the player otherwise won’t want to part with after that 2 hours is up.
If your game doesn’t provide more content than 2 hours that’s kinda on you IMO
And I say that as an indie game developer. Like it someone just thought it was neat to play for an hour then they were completely done touching my game… Why would I be shocked they refunded it? They might have refunded it because they expected… Dun dun dunnnn… More content?
It’s a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.
Eh, not every game needs more “content”. Clickolding and And Roger are, as I understand it, very good at what they do, but you can finish them both in an hour. It would probably be to their detriment to make them any longer.
I 100% agree. I always refund every movie and music album under 2 hours as well. If they wanted to keep my money they should have added an extra hour of slop. /s
It’s a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.
Not that it’s Steam’s fault, but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.
Yes, it’s a lot of work to make a game, but the only way to extend the play time of a story-focused single-player game without having to do even more work, is to water it down with low-effort filler content that reuses the expensive assets.
… Or just don’t put it on Steam. I don’t see why this is so controversial when it protects the players far more to have the refund option.
And just because someone finished and refunded it doesn’t mean they enjoyed it. These devs complaining about people “playing it to the end” then refunding it need to realize that part of it might be their game just isn’t that good.
I don’t think that’s a good reason for a refund, honestly. If you go to a restaurant or a movie, most places won’t give you your money back if you finished the meal or movie. If you finished it, you should pay for it… if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film. This just feels like an excuse to be a cheapskate.
if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film.
I disagree that you would necessarily know.
Mass Effect 3 is stellar, until the ending invalidates basically all of your choices and destroys the galaxy no matter what you do, because the lead writer and the director thought it right to bypass their internal review process.
Firewatch feels like it’s going to take at least some of the dialogue choices you made in the game into account but then it turns out it’s entirely linear and smoke and mirrors.
A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.
If the game itself was enjoyable enough that you kept playing it, that doesn’t reach the threshold of “so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle” imo. Would you really expect your money back from a movie just because you didn’t like the ending? That’s wild to me.
A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.
Not to the point of deserving a refund, totally disagree. At what point do you draw a line? Should someone who hated the Game of Thrones ending get a refund for the years of subscription they paid to watch the rest of the show?
I don’t think not liking a piece of media you bought as much as you thought you would deserves a refund when you’ve already consumed all or nearly all of the media. You’ve received a service and used a product at that point, you should pay for it.
A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.
Don’t forget The Witcher 3, where bad end is on par with Mass Effect 3 and the logic to get it is really dumb and poorly telegraphed.
I still have CDPR (and by extension GOG) blacklisted. They burned me on that entire franchise and wasted a ton of my time. As far as I’m concerned, they owe me a game yhat doesn’t suck.
but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.
There are literally orders of magnitudes of difference between making an indie game last 3-4 hours vs a bloated AAA 100+ hour collectathon. Comparing the 2 isn’t an honest arguement
There are also orders of magnitude of difference in their staff levels and budgets. Both sides of the equation are relative. I don’t know of any techniques for creating good content quickly and inexpensively that only work for small indies and not for large AAA studios.
It’s like there are less and less songs produced now that bother with an intro because streaming services demand that you should get to the chorus fast.
there will always be exceptions and innovation. One of the things that shaped They Might Be Giants style is they used to release songs via a telephone number and if they held a note too long the phone service would think it was a dial tone and hang up.
I hate to say it, but the business model always affects the game design. The “meta” is to make a game that’s longer than 2 hours if you want to avoid this, or that the player otherwise won’t want to part with after that 2 hours is up.
If your game doesn’t provide more content than 2 hours that’s kinda on you IMO
And I say that as an indie game developer. Like it someone just thought it was neat to play for an hour then they were completely done touching my game… Why would I be shocked they refunded it? They might have refunded it because they expected… Dun dun dunnnn… More content?
It’s a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.
Eh, not every game needs more “content”. Clickolding and And Roger are, as I understand it, very good at what they do, but you can finish them both in an hour. It would probably be to their detriment to make them any longer.
I 100% agree. I always refund every movie and music album under 2 hours as well. If they wanted to keep my money they should have added an extra hour of slop. /s
Not that it’s Steam’s fault, but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.
Yes, it’s a lot of work to make a game, but the only way to extend the play time of a story-focused single-player game without having to do even more work, is to water it down with low-effort filler content that reuses the expensive assets.
Yes, so put in thework. Duh?
… Or just don’t put it on Steam. I don’t see why this is so controversial when it protects the players far more to have the refund option.
And just because someone finished and refunded it doesn’t mean they enjoyed it. These devs complaining about people “playing it to the end” then refunding it need to realize that part of it might be their game just isn’t that good.
I don’t think that’s a good reason for a refund, honestly. If you go to a restaurant or a movie, most places won’t give you your money back if you finished the meal or movie. If you finished it, you should pay for it… if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film. This just feels like an excuse to be a cheapskate.
I disagree that you would necessarily know.
Mass Effect 3 is stellar, until the ending invalidates basically all of your choices and destroys the galaxy no matter what you do, because the lead writer and the director thought it right to bypass their internal review process.
Firewatch feels like it’s going to take at least some of the dialogue choices you made in the game into account but then it turns out it’s entirely linear and smoke and mirrors.
A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.
If the game itself was enjoyable enough that you kept playing it, that doesn’t reach the threshold of “so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle” imo. Would you really expect your money back from a movie just because you didn’t like the ending? That’s wild to me.
Not to the point of deserving a refund, totally disagree. At what point do you draw a line? Should someone who hated the Game of Thrones ending get a refund for the years of subscription they paid to watch the rest of the show?
I don’t think not liking a piece of media you bought as much as you thought you would deserves a refund when you’ve already consumed all or nearly all of the media. You’ve received a service and used a product at that point, you should pay for it.
Don’t forget The Witcher 3, where bad end is on par with Mass Effect 3 and the logic to get it is really dumb and poorly telegraphed.
I still have CDPR (and by extension GOG) blacklisted. They burned me on that entire franchise and wasted a ton of my time. As far as I’m concerned, they owe me a game yhat doesn’t suck.
There are literally orders of magnitudes of difference between making an indie game last 3-4 hours vs a bloated AAA 100+ hour collectathon. Comparing the 2 isn’t an honest arguement
There are also orders of magnitude of difference in their staff levels and budgets. Both sides of the equation are relative. I don’t know of any techniques for creating good content quickly and inexpensively that only work for small indies and not for large AAA studios.
It’s like there are less and less songs produced now that bother with an intro because streaming services demand that you should get to the chorus fast.
there will always be exceptions and innovation. One of the things that shaped They Might Be Giants style is they used to release songs via a telephone number and if they held a note too long the phone service would think it was a dial tone and hang up.